Eternal Salvation
by Lil-Yul
Summary: The Pegasus Saint winced, realizing that all along he never had the guts to pierce into his beloved friend's body. Now he knew, even though how much the world mattered to him, Alone came first.   R&R please.


_Two minutes more to eternal salvation._

Tenma tensed. The world around him was strangely silent, as if the whole word had anticipated their deaths. The only sound he could hear was his own breathing, his racing heartbeats, and the dreaded ticking of the Stellar Clock. The clouds around him shifted every few seconds, in a scary shade of dark purple. To Tenma's opposite direction Alone stood, still as a statue, paintbrush in hand.

"Welcome," Alone smiled at Tenma, "You're just in time to witness the world's eternal salvation."

Behind Alone was the heart of the canvas, where the angels met, encircling the childhood visions of Alone, Tenma and Sasha. Tenma noticed the small patch of blank where the angel's eyes should be. The paintbrush held by Alone was stained with the ugly red color of blood, but perhaps, Tenma thought, Alone loved that color best.

"I see you haven't finished it yet." Tenma pointed at the angel, daring Alone to turn his back against him and finish the work. He raised the sword made from Athena's Cosmo. It was designed purely to separate Alone from Hades and Pandora's curse, never to kill him. With that Alone can never complete the painting, and all of Hades' malevolent powers would leave Alone.

The sparkling silver caught Alone's eyes, causing him to smirk. Could Tenma really, could that naïve Saint really attempt to hurt him? Alone never thought so. In a sense, Tenma was far more kind hearted than Alone himself. Tenma wouldn't hurt him no matter how much he wanted to. Tenma's heart never allowed such a thing. _Never._

_Foolish young Saint. _

With a cold laugh Alone drew his black sword. The reflection it gave it was eerie over the clouds. It sliced the air with an ear-piercing sound, and then Alone pointed the sharp edge at Tenma. "Come," he said, still smiling, "One minute is more than enough to erase you from my sight."

As soon as Tenma realized that he was being challenged by his dear friend, the Pegasus Saint gritted his teeth. For some reason he felt strangely calm as he leveled his sword with Alone's. He then allowed his Cosmo to rise all up to his Seventh Sense, enveloping him in a huge blaze of gold.

Alone did the same, causing Cosmo in the color of dark purple to burn and encase him. The two young men readied their blades, waiting, and then they rushed forward with all their might. The air burned with energy, both negative and positive. There was a violet rush of wind, a deafening sound, like glass crushing into glass, and a blinding wave of gold and purple as the two blazing waves of energy clashed with each other.

Tenma felt blood on his face, and so did Alone.

The Pegasus Saint winced, realizing that all along he never had the guts to pierce into his beloved friend's body. Now he knew, even though how much the world mattered to him, Alone came first. Tenma was close to breaking down at his failure. The failure had cost him the whole world, his life, Alone's life, and also Sasha's life.

Of all things, of all his ridiculous accuracy of punching when he gets mad, Tenma missed his target unintentionally at the last few _seconds_ of earth's existence. His grip on the silver blade loosened and it fell on the cloudy ground without a sound. It might've sunk right through the moist, fell down onto earth, and ironically before the blade could impale anyone right on earth the land would disappear.

Hades' Sword had blood trickling on it, and then dripping off the blade at the tip. The cut was clean and quick, as if the body it had just gone through was made of butter. Both Cosmo blazes died down, and then eventually faded away. The red blood quickly dyed the clouds pink, and then red, afterwards black.

But the pain never came to Tenma.

With a shock Tenma retaliated when his brains finally got to working out what exactly happened: Alone impaled _himself_ with Hades' Sword. He took a few steps back in horror, finding it unbelievably hard that Alone had sacrificed his final _two_ minutes to complete the Lost Canvas to commit suicide. There was a few moments of silence before Alone stumbled forward, right into Tenma. His long black hair had returned to the beautiful shade of blond it once was, but Tenma couldn't see Alone's sky blue eyes.

"Alone," Pegasus whispered, "ALONE, what the _hell_ do you think you're doing?" The whispering was more fierce this time, "Wake up, you dumbass, _wake up_!"

The silence Tenma received from Alone felt far scarier than the silence in the human world. The body Tenma held felt cold, like ice, but perhaps it was just Tenma. Or perhaps Alone had already died. The only thing Tenma could think of at that exact moment is '_Stupid, stupid Alone_.'

_One minute more to eternal salvation._

"Sorry," Tenma heard a slight mutter.

Tenma felt as if he had just been splashed by a bucketful of icy water. That voice- he was definitely back alive! Alone was still there with him! Now just to talk some sense back to him-

"I couldn't let you… Stain your hands… Any longer…"

-Now he _seriously _had to talk some sense back into Alone-

"If you kill me… You'll feel nothing… But guilt…"

-Tenma lost everything he wanted to yell at Alone. What _nonsense_ was he sprouting?

"Regret… And sorrow… So…" Alone smiled, although with the blood splattered all over his face, Tenma thought it was as warm and inviting as ever, "Better _me_ than _you_, Tenma."

_Ten seconds more to eternal salvation._

"Shut up, Alone! You'll be fine. You _didn't_ finish the Lost Canvas. Me, you and Sasha will be able to laugh and smile together again!"

There was a soft chuckle as Alone pointed his bloodstained finger at the heart of the canvas. The blanks on the angel's eyes had been replaced by a creepy red that came from Hades' Sword.

_Alone's blood._

_One second more to eternal salvation._

The Stellar Clock stopped with a hollow click. The angel's red eyes began to glow in unison, bathing the entire scenery in an eerie red glow. Beneath them somewhere the earth rumbled and shifted. The first thing Tenma heard was the screams that seemed to pierce deeply into his heart, followed by the loud crumbling of a thousand cities, villages, buildings, towers, whatever was down there. Then there was the sound of water crushing everything in path, more screams, and even _more_ screams.

At that moment Tenma felt his Cosmo being pulled away, torn away forcefully from him. Along with his Cosmo there was the unnerving feeling of his organs being dragged out with the Cosmo as well, a feeling he remembered well during his first encounter with Hades-Alone in Italy. The feeling lasted for a few moments before the Pegasus Cloth cracked. Before Tenma could act, the Cloth cracked into a thousand pieces, and then shattered. That was when he started coughing up blood.

_Why, Alone, why?_ Tenma's thoughts raced inside his head. There were a thousand questions he wanted to ask in that instant.

_Why have you succumbed to Hades' malice?_

_Why did you want to kill everyone?_

_Why must you paint to kill?_

_Doesn't the world matter to you at all, Alone?_

_Well, if it doesn't matter to you, it does to me!_

Fueled up by the thought, Tenma stood up, leaving Alone to lie in his own pool of blood. He staggered to get up but at least Tenma was in standing position now. And then _what_? Tenma was struck completely clueless. There was once a time where his fists solved nearly _everything_- except for Alone's stubbornness.

Tenma balled his fists. In frustration Tenma gathered whatever Cosmo he was able to focus and smashed his fist against the heart of the Canvas. There was a deep hollow sound and a golden crack appeared, splitting the image of Sasha, Tenma and Alone apart. But there was something wrong about his Cosmo.

"Tenma, step back, or _I'll_ crush you!"

Tenma ducked just as a barrage of dragon-shaped fists destroyed the image further in different places. Libra Dohko's Cosmo was wearing out rapidly, but it never seemed to falter the Libra Saint's will in halting 'Eternal Salvation'. Behind the read-haired man, Aries Shion was holding Athena- Sasha in his hands. She looked as if she was asleep, but Tenma really couldn't tell. Both Shion and Dohko seemed to have somehow resisted the Lost Canvas.

But at the last, no one could resist Alone's 'Eternal Salvation'.

Tenma collapsed right beside his friend. The blond blinked his blue eyes and waited.

"Is death salvation," Alone said softly, "Or is being alive a gift?"

"_Both_," Tenma managed weakly.

Alone contemplated his decision for a while. For a few heartbeats, Alone lay as still as a statue. And then he raised his fingertips and touched his pendant lovingly. Wherever his finger contacted the surface of the silver, a trail of purple appeared. The trail took the form of a pentagon and raised itself to the Heart of the canvas, resealing everything together.

"So be it." Alone said with absolute conviction. The seal disappeared into the heart and then wiped out all of the red lights from the angel's eyes. At the exact moment, all rumbling sounds stopped.

The clouds around them swirled and faded as the remnants of the Lost Canvas crumbled.

Under the setting sun, Tenma and Sash sat side-by-side, facing the white marble tombstone overlooking the sea. On the white slab it wrote _"In Memoriam of Alone"._ The two of them had absolutely nothing to say in the face of the cold white block. It seemed as if Alone was with them, but at the same time, the block reminded them that they could never see Alone ever again.

"What did Alone say?" Sasha decided to break the silence.

"That guy," Tenma smiled at his memory, "Said he only wanted…" Tenma paused.

Sasha waited patiently for Tenma to get his answer out. It seemed like forever for Tenma to tell her.

"_To let us live on, so that we could smile again."_

**Bah. Please don't flame me, I actually idolize Alone, you know.**

**I'm such a sucker for tragedies. Anyway, thank you for reading, and yes, I did not read the original manga by Masami Kurumada. I only read the Lost Canvas, because, being such a perfectionist as I am I have terrible problems with Kurumada's art style. **

**Constructive criticism, 'Hi's or any other sort of comment is sincerely needed, unless you're going to say something like 'Shit you' and walk away. **

**-Li Xuan Kai**


End file.
